finished!

The Armadillo socks are done! Yay! But no pictures because my computer's in the shop. Boo. I'll put up pics when I can. I'm very happy with them, though the i-cord bind-off is not quite stretchy enough. I finished them up while Germany was beating Poland in the EuroCup, so that was a good evening.

still here, still knitting

I got the flickr problem sorted, and then kind of forgot about the blog. Oops. So, but some FOs! I finished my Digitessas, finally, and am madly in love. LOVE, I tell you.

I'm working on the Kauni cardigan, and I'm following the pattern for the shaping, but I decided the pattern wasn't quite right, so I wound up charting an Elvish poem in Tengwar script. Which means I can't memorize the pattern, but need to knit the whole thing while peering at a chart, so that's my podcast knitting. Of course, my podcasters are not coming through for me lately, but there's always Podiobooks. And I think you'll agree that it's worth the effort, because it's pretty, see?

In other news, I've started the Armadillo socks with the yarn I won in Mari's contest, I'm test-knitting a new pattern for the remarkable Yarnissima, and I've also got itchy fingers for Giselle, so I'll probably start that soon, with yarn from - brace yourself - my Arwen cardigan, which I frogged. The yarn just wasn't right, the reversible cables were too thick and heavy and dragged the whole thing down. It was very sad. I've done extensive swatching, and this yarn is sorry, but it really just wants to be plain stockinette, please.

So yeah. That's the knitting news.

oh yeah...

Right, I mentioned it on the other blog, but forgot to put it here: we're moving to Utrecht. No details on when, yet, but sometime between September 2008 and September 2009. I've already checked: it has a good yarn shop.

And the Sindelfinger Handwerkermarkt? I think we should do a Benediktbeuern-style field trip, stay a night, check out Sindelfingen - it looks cool, even more hobbit-y than my town.

Sorry no pics lately - I've been taking them, but I can't upload them to flickr until I pay for a pro account, and there's some trouble with my debit card. I'll get it sorted out at some point.

tooooooo much!

Wah! I haven't even told you about the TONS and TONS of yarn (all of it purple or teal... rut, anyone?) that I got at Webs, and now today I was at the Sauerlacher Spring... uh, thingy, and bought EVEN MORE yarn from the Wollmeise!

Yeah. This is me, paring down on the possessions in preparation for the big move. Yes, I know: ur doin it rong. Sigh.

Tomorrow! Tomorrow I start my yarn-diet

Really.

Oh, foo.

yes!

Well, sort of. I tinkered a bit with the color settings, so that the pink table that one yarn is sitting on is the same as the blue table that another yarn is sitting on, but the yarn in the picture is as close to the yarn itself as gamma correction, brightness, contrast and saturation could get me, with a little help from the RGB sliders. IrfanView, I love you THIS MUCH.

But I digress. Anyway. FIRSTLY, even though I bought it ages ago from Tini's Dawanda shop, this is when I finally got decent photos of it. No idea what I'm going to make with this, but it'll have to be something for me, me, ME!

Then there was the Utrecht trip. Now, I asked Amy if she wanted me to bring her anything when I went out to Providence, and she made a seemingly simple request: Lana Grossa Bingo in a nice green. Well, Elemmaciltur's shop didn't have it, but they had some very nice similar stuff, so I bought a bit of that. My LYS was the same, no Lana Grossa but I got something similar, and then it was time for the trip to Utrecht and to be honest I'm glad I had this mission for Amy, because all the boys groaned and rolled their eyes, and if I'd only been checking out the yarn shop for myself, I might have been tempted to let it slide to keep them happy, but no: the fact that I was doing it for someone else gave me the fortitude to ignore the grousing of non-knitting grinches. So yes, I did get to Modilaine, and they did have Lana Grossa, but: both of the greens were yucky. Nearly all of the colors were yucky, actually. But I did get to check out a great yarn shop, AND they have Rowan. So I bought some yarn that might do for Arwen mark II.

The end of the Amy-story is that I went to Wolle Rödel in Munich and found Lana Grossa Bingo in the same icky colors as at Modilaine, so I gave up on Lana Grossa and got her Siena Big, which has the same properties (content, gauge, washability). In purple, because the nice green was discontinued. Sometimes you just canNOT get a break, really.

So look, I haven't even shown you what I got at Webs, and I will, but I really should go make dinner for the offspring, before Sally Struthers shows up to make a late-night commercial about their plight.

I went to WEBS!

Yes, that Webs. And the moment I stepped inside and saw the place, my face fell off. OhmaGAWD, y'all.

And I got SO! MUCH! YARN! And I'm trying to take pictures and upload them, but oh fribnitz, I've said this so often I'm sure you can all say it with me, so here we go, all together now:

My camera sucks swamp water.

Tomorrow, I will try again. Pinky swear.

wheee!

So a nice man brought me a box today, and in it was the woolwinder and um, Haspel... skein-holdy-thingy that I bought on ebay! Oh this is so exciting. -->

<-- Here is what turned out to be the top bit of the skein-holdy-thingy, but I didn't know that when I photographed it, which is why it's upside down in the picture. I thought that nob-thing was a sort of foot that it was to stand on, and I wondered what would keep it from tipping over. And this is what turned out to be the bottom bit. Look, it's all wood and low-tech! I feel so Amish! -->

<-- And the wool winder! I had no idea how to use this, but I figured it out pretty quickly. It's a happy little gadget. It really seems to be enjoying its job.

Winding! Fun! The kids will totally want to get in on this, and they'll try to turn it into a speed contest. I wonder if I have any yarn crappy enough for them to practice on... -->

<-- Voilà, the finished product. Isn't it fabulous? I almost don't want to use it, it's so perfect. Fortunately, it's a center-pull ball... not a ball. Bale? A center-pull thingy, anyway, so it'll look like that for quite some time after I've started knitting with it. Yay!

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go wind my entire stash into these little bales.

lo! a fo!

Yes, I finished something. Two somethings, actually, I'll put my second PIF thing up as soon as I have confirmation that Alke's received it - I wouldn't want to spoil the surprise. But also, Ignatz spotted my Fabulous Fetchings from Tini and requested a pair of his own. I let him pick something from my worsted box and it only took me eight days! Okay, I was doing other stuff, the aforementioned PIF project and a trip to Utrecht, so in all it was probably only 6-8 hours. Anyway. Fetching. Finished.

flickrdork

I should know how to do this, but I don't, so you have to go over here to see what I just finished knitting. Elemmaciltur had to take the pictures because I'm still having trouble with my camera. But look! I made some pretty socks! Well, Yarnissima designed them, and the Wollmeise dyed the wool, so yeah, standing on the shoulders of giants and all that. But still, I'm a little bit proud.

people to knit with!

Yesterday was the second Friday Knitting Night at Lanaiolo, and I just love this. It's so much quieter than Starbuck's, and cheaper, if you don't buy the yarn, which of course I will as soon as I reach a decision - so, probably not until next year. But, you know, it's not an English-speaking group, though some of the members can. German is the default setting, and I don't really trust my German, even though Actual Germans keep telling me I speak it perfectly (I wish these people would share their hallucinogens with me...), so I kept saying things in English. I felt like a total dork. Memo to self: get clue.

PIFyay!

Today my PIF from Tini arrived and it is Fetching! Which is too, too perfect, because with this 8-hour-a-day data-entry job I'm doing, I keep resting my wrists on the desk and they get really cold, and putting on more sweaters or turning up the heat doesn't help at all, because my core temperature's fine, it's just my hands that are cold. And I was honestly and truly just thinking today about how I need something mittlike, but this job (and my own PIF projects) doesn't leave me time to knit them. And then they came in the mail! So very warm and wonderful. Thank you Tini! You must be psychic and clairvoyant!

I also bought some yarn from Tini that is so! Pretty! But my camera sucks so the photos turned out horrible. I'll try again tomorrow.

uh-oh.

I've been so brain-whacked after work, and so busy trying to cram my usual 13 hours of day into 3 hours, that I haven't knitted since Monday.

What if I've forgotten how?

wtf?

Where did all my Bs go? What happened to my blog? The wysiwyg and the page source don't show any missing content, but no matter how many times I reload, my blog looks all weird. This is just a testy-thing, to see if any new entries come up similarly confused. I'm still knitting Very Secret Secrets, so I can't tell you anything else just yet.

this blogging thing is pretty neat

I got stuff! Excellently timed, too, because I am unaccountably crabby today. But look! Look! Is it not beee-yooo-teee-ful? (click to biggern)
Amy sent me these! And they are my favorite colors and silk+merino is my favorite fiber (as of today) and clearly my whining about limited Malabrigo availability* has been heard, which is actually a very bad lesson, isn't it? Because this would seem to indicate that whining pays off, and I should do more of it!

No, no, I'm more intelligent than that. Not much more, but...

Anyway.

The book was blogged about here, and I commented on it without ANY IDEA that it was intended for me. I was so surprised when I saw it, I said, "HA!" loud enough to startle my kids. I recognize the card too, I think Amy blogged about the artist as well, but it may actually have been someone else... And I love the bag, it's my favorite color and so nice I'm kind of afraid to use it.

So, one thousand thank-yous Amy, for the box of awesome! I love all of it.

* Malabrigo is actually available in Germany, via this company, but the photos on the site are so bad, I'm afraid to order anything from them.

I say nothing.

You know how, when you have a secret that you can't write about, sometimes you find that you can't write about anything at all? Yeah. It's like that.

I'll tell you later, I really will. With pictures and everything.

FO!

Oh Heavens, I almost forgot: I finished Henry today! Really finished-finished, tucked in the ends, wrapped it in blue cellophane, put it on DrBob's desk.


So, notes. Hm. Well, I used silk dyed with vegetable dyes, that I bought at a craft market. I asked the dyer if she has a website, but she said she doesn't believe in the internet. Too bad, because you should see her stuff, there's this mulberry-red color that would have made something fantastic for my mom, but I didn't buy that because... well, you know.

Anyway, it was significantly heavier than what the recipe called for, and it was kind of... um, unslippery - I had to push it along the needles and working with it made my hands a bit tired, but not horribly so. The weight difference means it's probably quite a bit longer than the designer intended, plus it's thinner than the recipe wanted, because I just knit until I ran out of yarn, basically, which wasn't very long: this was pretty cheap for silk, but silk? Is not cheap. Anyway, the recipe says 5 feet by 8 inches. Mine's about 7 feet by 6 inches. I also learned a new method of binding off (um, tubular? sewn? something like that) that I now want to use for everything.

So yeah. It was a lot of work, but I'm really happy with it. And I probably won't knit it again. Why knit something twice? That's what socks are for.

what was in the bag...

Why, yarn , of course! Some very exciting fluffy bulky stuff:


Some beautiful shiny dark green stuff:

Cotton and viscose, ooo.

No idea what this is, but I really like it:

If I were going to name it, I would call it "Naiad."

Some sheeny Rowan Damask (my first Rowan, squeee!):


And last but certainly not least, oh I'm so excited...

MALABRIGO! Wooot!

Again, thank you Secret Pal for the supercalifragilistic-expialidocious yarn! Yay!

Secret Pal strikes again!

Heeeewack! Teh awesome arrived in the mail today! Looky!

As always, click to embiggen. Okay okay okay, what have we here... a bear. In a bathrobe! Love that! Ignatz giggled too.

She's also wearing this beaded headband thing that I just love. It's just twisted wire and beads, and black elastic, but when I tried it on and checked the mirror, I said "ooo! I'm a pretty princess!" (that's a video link, so possibly nsfw). I think I actually said it aloud. How embarrassing. It really is shiny and happy, though. Unfortunately, my hair is so slippery (really, I can't keep anything in it for long) that the headband creeps up toward the back of my head. If I had short hair, it would probably eventually just shoot right off my head and scare the cats! Haha! Wouldn't that be GREAT!?

Ahem. Um. Next? A travel-cup! Have I blogged about how dependent I am on porta-coffee? I don't think I have, so I don't know how she knew, but I totally am. I love this. I particularly love that it's from Starbucks, and says "decorate your own damn cup! We're tired of thinking up spiffy new designs!" I'm paraphrasing.

A red-and-silver holly ornament! Sparkly! So pretty! Totally going on the tree every year until forever. Also some foil-wrapped chocolate ornaments which have absolutely no chance of gracing our next Christmas tree. I notice that there are four, and that my family has four chocolate-eating members, but I'm sure that's just coincidence.

Then! A notepad! And! It's magnetic! And has a penguin! This will definitely be used. There were also some Post-its that didn't make their way into the photo for some reason... oh, right, here they are. They'll also be used. The house will be festooned with pale blue exclamation points and DrBob will give me That Look.

Then there are two books that are clearly meant for Ignatz but will certainly be read by me as well: Shade's Children, by Garth Nix, whom I've heard of and meant to get around to reading for some time now; and The Warrior Heir (love that cover) by Cinda Williams Chima, whom I've never heard of, but that's okay. Ignatz sez "cool." He's thirteen.

Next up is a pack of Yu-Gi-Oh cards, clearly for the Sniglet, and also this neato Matchstick Garden thing, which will also be for him because he's into that sort of thing right now.

Did I miss anything? Oh! Look at that groovy bag with the amaryllis on it! Exactly when I needed it, too: just yesterday I put the beginnings of Kelly's Kauni sweater in a plastic bag, Maggie Righetti's words ringing in my ears ("Don't let me see you dragging your knitting around in a crappy plastic bag!" or something to that effect). The timing on this is nothing short of amazing.

Oh, and Fufu loves the bag. She rubbed her face on it for like half an hour. No idea why. I hope she doesn't try to eat it...

Even better is what's in the amaryllis bag. That's for tomorrow's post. Heh heh heh.

Thank you Secret Pal! You are awesome!

here's a picture!

(click to embiggen)

It's some yarn! (On a knitblog, imagine that.) This came in the mail today, from the lovely, lovely people at Woll-Sucht, who also sent gummi bears and tea! And they speak English! And I love them.

I also love this yarn, and the cardigan it's going to make, although I am fiddling around with alternatives to the squares. This is my next project, and it's big and involves (gasp) steeking! This qualifies it as stunt-knitting, but I'm up for it. This winter I need something warm and woolly in my lap, and sheep are too heavy and I can't get the damn cats to sit still. It'll take awhile, though. It's for Kelly, and if I'm lucky I should be able to get it to her in time for her birthday. You know, in April, when spring really starts heating up in Maryland. Ooo, unforeseen problem. Maybe I could convince her to move to Australia.

boo!

It's the Incredible Disappearing Knitblogger! Um, yeah. I am working on... stuff. To blog, I need to take pictures of things, and for that I need light, and you know what? It's January. And then it will be February, and there will be more light but I will be even crabbier! Not sure how that works, but 37 years of observation have shown it to be true.

So. I'm just poking my head out of the trenches to say I'm still here and I haven't forgotten y'all. And now you're all, I clicked all the way over to your blog, and this is all I get!?

Yes. Yes, it is.